


comfort in iron

by erebones



Series: pass through fire [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Background Poly, Cuddling & Snuggling, Friendship, M/M, Morning Sex, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 06:49:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14443707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: "When you make a mistake with metal, you can melt things down and start fresh. It is irritating, and it costs in time and soot and sweat, but it can be done. There is a comfort in iron, knowing that a fresh start is always possible."Percy wakes up the morning after death, and finds a fresh start.





	comfort in iron

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 69. 
> 
> Inspired by the rollercoaster of emotions that was episode 68-69. The quote in the summary is from Kerrek's letter to Keyleth. 
> 
> I consider Vox Machina to be have some kind of nebulous poly dynamic, and while this isn't made explicit in this fic, you can assume that what goes on here does not involve cheating or anything like that.

There are fingers in Percival’s hair. Long, delicate fingers, warm against the chill of the room. He’s sprawled facedown on the mattress in shirtsleeves and breeches—he doesn’t remember taking off his boots, but his stocking feet are poking out of the coverlet just the way he likes. The fingers scritch lightly at his nape, radiating tingles down his spine. Percy growls a little contented noise in his throat.

The fingers pause. “You awake, Percy?”

He’s starting to be, anyway. Awake enough to register his leaden limbs and the stiff, aching parts of him that still protest at living. But he knows that voice, knows its rough and tangled depths, so he forces his weary body to turn and see the face of his companion.

“Time is it?” he slurs.

Vax chucks him under the chin, chiding, “Early, still. Go back to sleep, darling.”

“Mmf.” He wiggles his toes thoughtfully against the mattress. “How long’ve I been asleep?”

“Not nearly long enough, in my expert opinion.” The words themselves are teasing, but there’s a darker weight behind them. Percy rolls onto his side to better take him in.

He’s perched on the edge of the bed, still dressed for sleeping in soft leggings and a well-worn shirt that lays open at the throat, exposing the delicate silver chain that hangs around his neck. One leg is bent and folded under him, and his bare toes poke out from the rumpled blankets. They feel mismatched to Percy, like they were slung across him in a hurry—and still he’s not quite warm enough. He has no memory of removing his coat. Maybe Vax did it for him while he slept?

 _Did you stay the night?_ Percy means to ask. But he sees the answer illustrated right before his eyes.

Vax’s face is a study in stillness. Dreary silver light streams through the diamond-paned windows—early morning in Whitestone—and spills over one sharp cheekbone, the tip of his ear where it protrudes from the fall of dark hair over his face. His eyes glint out of the shadows at Percy, smudged with sleeplessness at their edges.

“Have you slept at all?” Percy asks softly. They’re alone in his bedchamber, and the old stone walls are stiflingly thick, but the heavy stillness of the morning begets whispers.

“A little,” Vax says. His hand moves from Percy’s hair to his cheek. Percy hasn’t shaved in three days, and the stubble rasps audibly against Vax’s palm as he strokes the side of his face. _Does hair grow on a corpse?_ Percy wonders, but he refrains from asking it aloud. Something in Vax’s solemn face tells him it wouldn’t be welcome.

He lets his eyes fall shut instead, just relishing the warmth of Vax’ildan’s touch. A minute or maybe an hour later, he opens them again, startled awake by his own subconscious. A shadow moves at the foot of the bed.

“Vax?”

His voice is terribly childlike in his own ears, frail and cracking at the edges. Just like that, Vax is there, dressed now in a tunic and soft leather boots. His collar still hangs open, exposing the dull glint of iron.

“I’m here,” he says, bending down. Soft, dry lips brush Percy’s brow. “How do you feel?”

“Cold,” Percy says. The blankets have been tossed even further down around his waist during his morning repose, and his thin shirt and silken waistcoat, twisted around his torso as they are, are not enough to keep out the chill. He fumbles for the loosened cravat at his throat and subsides, dumbly thankful, when Vax takes over. His fingers are far nimbler than Percy’s—they don’t tremble even a little as he loosens the knot and slips the fabric over Percy’s head before moving to the buttons on his waistcoat.

“May I?”

“Please.”

He burns beneath his skin with shame and gratification as Vax helps him out of his clothes. It’s a strange conflict that he doesn’t know how to reconcile. Helplessness is not a state that Percy is accustomed to, and yet the tender economy of Vax’s movements are a new, unexplored frontier of intimacy that Percy finds himself beginning to crave.

“Arms,” Vax says, and when Percy lifts them obediently, the shirt is stripped from his body. He shivers violently in the cold, but Vax is already bundling him up in a fresh one and climbing into bed beside him, boots and all.

“You’ll mess the sheets,” Percy says through chattering teeth.

“It’s all right.” Vax pulls the bedclothes up around their shoulders and doesn’t even flinch when Percy sneaks a cold hand into the front of his shirt to touch bare skin. He’s like bonfire against Percy’s laconic form, singed at the edges with dank and must. He’s been to the shrine recently.

Percy trails curious fingers along his chest, following the delicate silver chain until they find the small metal skull with its obstinate, pointed beak. A tiny mimic of the one Percy wears around his own neck, courtesy of Keyleth—but this is less a show of support and more a promise. A vow given in darkness and blood. He traces the hollowed-out eye sockets with his thumb as the metal warms his hand.

“Perce—”

“What?” He relinquishes the pendant and lays his hand flat on Vax’s sternum. He can feel his heartbeat underneath the skin, pounding light and rapid-fire against bone. Like a bird’s. A little drunk on skin-heat and morbidity, he asks, “Did you appeal to her on my behalf?”

Vax goes very still against him. He was placid before, making himself into an easy shape against which Percy could rest—but now he is deathlike, as perfectly unmoving as the chiseled stone figures that adorn the coffins in the de Rolo family crypt.

“I did not,” Vax says at last. His voice is utterly wrecked. He finds Percy’s hand with his own beneath the covers and holds it, massaging the delicate bones of his wrist with a sturdy thumb. “She’s not… that sort. And I feared—I was afraid—”

His chest rises and falls violently beneath Percy’s ear, shuddering. Percy makes a soft noise of inquiry and turns to press his lips to Vax’s clavicle.

“I was afraid she would take you for good,” Vax breathes. His pointed nose nudges against Percy’s hairline, and Percy fancies he can feel the movement of his lips as he speaks, barely louder than breath. “I couldn’t risk it. I’m sorry. She turned me aside once before, with Grog—she doesn’t give second chances. She is… a selfish mistress. And I serve her willingly, but gods help me, Percy, I could not take the chance that she would find your spirit and snuff you out permanently. I couldn’t have borne it.”

Percy closes his eyes. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me, Vax. I know… what she is like, a little.”

Vax’s hand tightens around his. “You spoke to her. I knew it. In Vasselheim, you went before her and— _why_ , Percy? Why would you attempt such a thing?”

He thinks about the letter he wrote, still tucked safely in a clever inner pocket in his coat. Still unread, thank the gods. But Vax has always been percpetive. “I suppose I wanted… confirmation,” he he says at last, talking around the words he wrote on the eve of his own demise. He will burn that letter the first chance he gets. “Confirmation of what I already knew about myself.”

“What? That you’re a massive fuck-up?” His voice cracks, and Vax releases his hand to cup Percy’s cheek again. “I could have told you that, de Rolo.”

Percy breaks into a caustic smile, eyelids burning. “Just de Rolo now, is it?”

“Don’t be pedantic, Freddy.” Vax releases his face and strokes his hair back from his brow. His hand is a blur, and so is the glint of the raven skull lying on his brown chest, and Percy burrows closer, unable to look at the raw devotion on Vax’s handsome face. The weight of that emotion is a cold iron rod in the pit of his stomach, demanding attention—but he is too weak to bear it.

“Vax’ildan.”

“Yes, my dear?”

“It’s been a long time since you’ve called me Freddy.”

There is a moment of thoughtful quiet between them. Percy can almost hear the slow stretch of Vax’s memory reaching back along recent days, weeks, months… back to a little sun-warmed room in a far-off place, separate from the ebb and flow of time, where for a tiny in-between moment they were at peace.

“Percy, will you promise me something? Two things, actually.”

“Greedy,” Percy murmurs, and gives squeaks when Vax pinches his ribs ever-so-gently in retaliation. “Yowch!”

“Hush yourself, you beast.” But Vax doesn’t sound upset, not even a little bit. “First, promise me you won’t die again, not anytime soon.”

“I will certainly try. I can’t say it’s the most pleasant experience, all around.”

Vax snorts at his flippancy, but lets it be. “Second… and this may be more difficult for you… I want you to know something.” He holds Percy closer and eases down the bed a little so that they’re face to face. Percy squints to bring him into focus. “I know you believe that you are beyond redemption. That you’ve made too many mistakes in your life to atone for. But listen to me, Percy. Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the Third of Whitestone—”

“And Vox Machina,” Percy interjects. Vax is so painfully close to the mark, he can’t let it go unchecked. “Of Whitestone and Vox Machina.”

“You just wanted the extra syllables on there, didn’t you.”

“Berk,” Percy says, and pinches him back. Of the twins, Vax is infinitely more ticklish, and that slight touch is enough to make him jerk and writhe a little. Percy feels a distant warmth begin to kindle in his belly, and smiles.

“Let me finish. You are so _fucking_ brave, Percival. And so smart—tremendously stupid, but smart, even brilliant. We’re always ten steps behind you.” Vax glares into his face, demanding Percy’s full attention. “And whatever you believe about yourself, we love you for it, and we believe you are more than your mistakes. _I_ believe that.”

It almost hurts to hear. Percy has despised himself for a very long time. He wears it like a familiar shoe, leather formed to skin through years of wear and tear. Though tattered, the rime of loathing still clings to him, like a crust of salt that has bleached into the fabric of his soul. And yet Vax is so emphatic that the words ring a tone of truthfulness that's hard for Percy to distrust.  _Maybe, maybe_ , a voice sing-songs in the back of his head. It is not Orthax, and not Vax'ildan, nor even himself, now, as he is at this moment—it's a younger, sweeter, brighter-eyed version of Percy that hasn't existed for a very long time. Maybe Vax does speak the truth. Maybe dying was the tipping scale he needed to start afresh. 

Percy ducks his head and tucks it underneath Vax’s chin. Where it’s safe. Away from the swirl of thoughts that cloud his muddled head.  “I really don’t deserve you,” he mumbles. “But I’m grateful to have you all the same.”

“You do have me,” Vax says. Warm lips against his brow, in his hair. Percy doesn’t quite recall when he last bathed—he feels strangely clean for having been dead so recently—and his mouth is dry and a little musty, but he finds himself burrowing closer anyway, into the circle of Vax’s arms. “You always have and you always will.”

“My Vax,” Percy whispers, smiling. The narrow chest against him huffs with laughter.

“Just so.”

The ache in his belly grows unexpectedly sharp, a crown of thorns tangling in his guts and reaching up for his heart. Percy clings to his bedfellow and presses his face against Vax’s throat, desperate for something he can’t name. They are already as close as two people can be, physically and otherwise—he feels flayed open with it, like Vax could reach inside him and pull out his heart and Percy wouldn’t try to dissuade him. But he wants to be closer. Wants to bury himself in Vax, hide in his curling shadows, his sun-bright smile.

“Freddy,” Vax murmurs. It’s not quite a question, that nickname, but it speaks a thousand words that Percy doesn’t know how to untwine.

“You stayed with me,” Percy says, “all night. Didn’t you?”

Vax hesitates, and it’s answer enough. “Yes.”

“The others?”

“Sleeping in, no doubt. We had a bit to drink. Some more than others.”

“And you?”

“An ale. I didn’t—didn’t want to sleep. Couldn’t. I just felt… I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

Vax’s uncertain stumbling is adorable. Percy’s chest brims with it, full of affection and light and _warmth._ Between that and the firm heat of Vax’s shins against his own, the tangle of feet, his arms around Percy’s shoulders, he can barely remember the bone-deep chill of waking up. Only his nose is still cool when he rubs it against Vax’ildan’s throat—it would be pink, he’s sure, if he could see it in a mirror—and Vax sighs at the contact but doesn’t pull away.

“Are you not tired?” Percy asks solicitously.

“A little,” Vax admits, and it sounds like a lie. But Percy feels too comfortable, too cherished, to relinquish him to slumber. “Don’t worry about me, Freddy. As long as you’re feeling all right, I’m content.”

“I feel as though I was dragged through town by a team of drunken horses,” Percy says flatly. “It’s a vast improvement over yesterday, believe me.” He presses a little kiss to Vax’s throat in consolation and smiles at the tiny _meep_ of surprise that escapes him. “All right?”

Vax just breathes a moment, a little unsteady in the quiet morning. “Yes of course.” One hand trails down Percy’s spine beneath the covers and rests at his sacrum, palm flat to the base of his spine. It’s not forcing him anywhere, not pushing, just holding on. Percy presses back into the contact and exhales heat against Vax’s throat. He is very warm, now, almost too warm. And yet somehow not warm enough. “Freddy…”

“Mm?”

Vax lets out a quiet, wild sort of noise, a desperate chuckle that sticks in his throat. “You were dead yesterday, Percival, or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t. No thanks to you.” Percy fingers the raven amulet around Vax’s neck. It’s hot in his palm, and sharp where the beak pokes his skin. “I know you’re a servant of the Raven Queen, but a little less morbidity would be appreciated in this instance.”

The smell of metal fills his nose as he leans down to kiss the center of Vax’s chest. It’s familiar, a little—the pendant is long cooled from the heat of the forge, but it still lends that metallic brine to Vax’s skin as his lips move across it, following the plane of his collarbone. Percy licks across the delicate chain where it rests in the crook of his neck, and Vax swallows hard.

“Perce…”

“It’s Freddy.”

“Sorry?”

Percy grins and slips his hands deeper into Vax’s tunic. “It’s Freddy when we make love. Isn’t it?”

Vax gasps, ribs expanding under Percy’s hands—he’s trembling a little, his nails digging faint half-moons into the small of Percy’s back. “Is that what we’re doing?” he whispers. In spite of his words, the hard cast of his body is already softening. He nuzzles Percy’s hairline and sighs when Percy presses his lips to Vax’s throat, soft and sure.

“I want to be close to you,” Percy confesses. The tremor in his hands hardly plagues him at all, subsiding enough that he can undo the laces of Vax’s tunic with ease. “In whatever capacity you’ll have me.”

A switch seems to flip in Vax’s brain, unseen but not unfelt—his hands move with sudden purpose, stroking Percy’s back and flanks as he presses him into the mattress and moves astride him. One leg slips between Percy’s, nudging up between his thighs, and Percy sprawls, letting the tension in his pelvis unspool across his body. Vax, limned in silver light, looks down at him and smiles.

“Oh, I’ll have you, Freddy. You beautiful man.”

Vax reaches down and cups his face in both hands. Percy can’t help but reach back, curling his fingers loosely around Vax’s wrists as their eyes connect—silver-grey to blue, cut through with the pale, watery light scattered across the bed. Percy feels like he’s underwater. Sinking. Still breathing. Heart still beating as Vax leans down, down, throwing shadows against the wall, to kiss him.

Moss fills Percy’s mouth, damp and wild. Kissing Vax is always a little bit like falling asleep in the woods and waking up to another world, a world of mist and cool rain and the smell of rotted leaves. But today there’s an edge to it. A thread of something _other_ —desperation, or hope, or helpless fury, stamped in the toothy curvature of Vax’s mouth. Then Percy parts his lips, inviting him in, and the wet-moss-blood-chill dissolves until all he can taste is heat and skin.

And salt. Just a little bit. A warm droplet pearls on Percy’s cheek, and when he reaches up to wipe it away, another falls against his knuckles.

“Shut up,” Vax whispers. His eyes are pinched shut, but tears glimmer on his cheeks, betraying him. Percy reaches up and wipes them away.

“I didn’t say anything,” Percy says, and kisses him. A kiss to his rumpled brow for calm. A kiss to his cheek for sweetness. And a kiss to his bitter lips, brief at first, shallow—then warm and deep and devouring, tongue against tongue, until Percy feels as though all his inside have been scooped out, leaving room for nothing but the warmth of Vax’s mouth and the weight of his body.

Percy feels sluggish and slow compared to the living forge-heat radiating off of Vax. Arousal simmers in his veins, sparked to kindling but not quite a blaze. But he reaches for Vax anyway, hungrier than what his body can accommodate—he fumbles and fight with his clothes, shoving tunic and shirt away, trembling at the cusp of his belt buckle. Bare-backed, the metal skull glinting on his sternum, Vax catches Percy’s hands in his and lifts them to kiss the knuckles, the palms. The pulse point at each wrist, slow and purposeful. He is direct in a way Percy isn’t used to. He _stares_ at him, and not entirely out of desperate lust. He stares at him like he’s afraid Percy will disappear if he so much as blinks.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Percy tells him. He leans forward, craning to kiss the center of Vax’s chest. His warm velvet skin is so smooth. Inviting attention. Percy licks across to a nipple and relishes the soft cry above him.

“You’d better not,” Vax whispers. He cups the back of Percy’s head and rocks against him, ever so gently. Percy’s cock, slow to stir, plumps a little in his breeches.

“Be patient with me,” he begs. He leans back on the pillows as Vax pries open his laces with clever fingers, moving aside wool and cotton to burrow into his smallclothes. “I’m… it’s difficult. But I want you, Vax. I do.”

“Shh, Freddy, I believe you.” Tender as a honeybee alighting on a flower, Vax cups Percy in one hand. His thumb traces circles at the tip, slow and mesmerizing, and Percy punches out an exhale at the slow agony of arousal. “You’re all pink,” Vax teases. “Gods, you’re a pretty sight.”

Percy quivers. His thighs feel taut with strain until Vax strokes down, rucking his clothes down his hips and further, soothing him. He feels a bit like a gentled horse, but he lets it happen. Slowly, the tension bleeds away.

“My Percy,” Vax says, low in his ear. Percy’s mouth is so dry. The drag of Vax’s fingers down his chest and belly stokes the fire, and he shifts up into Vax’s weight.

“Closer,” he begs. “Please.”

“Yes. All right.” A bit hoarse, flush with need, Vax climbs out of bed long enough to shed the rest of his clothes before burrowing back into Percy’s space. He kisses him again, sloppy and warm, and his hands are everywhere—at the pulse point in his neck, ringing his nipples, flicking curiously at his navel, knuckles stroking the tender insides of his thighs. Percy spreads his legs as best he can beneath Vax’s weight and sighs when those clever fingers stroke behind his balls.

“Please. Vax…”

“I’m right here, Freddy.” Despite the playful nickname, Vax’s voice is deadly serious. He helps Percy open his hips, hooks his hand beneath one thigh. Vax kisses down his throat and rocks against him, gentle and undemanding—he’s entirely erect, and the hot length of his cock lays fat and moisture-wicked against Percy’s trembling belly. “Do you want me to suck you?” Vax murmurs. “Do you want me to eat you up, beautiful boy?”

Percy whines and scrabbles at his shoulders. Such a narrow, whip-quick frame, and yet Vax is surprisingly strong. The tension in his biceps is doing funny things to Percy’s head. “P-please,” he stammers. It’s one of the few words left swirling about in his brain, along with _Vax_ and _darling_ and _yes_.

“All right. All right.” Vax shoves an errant lock of hair out of his face and turns a bit, rooting around the foot of the bed where most of the blankets have piled up. One of them, a hand-knit throw in beautiful royal blue, is tugged free and tucked tenderly around Percy’s shoulders. “Don’t want you catching chill,” he mutters, flushing a darker red. He kisses the palm of Percy’s searching hand and guides it to roost in his dark hair. “Hold on, Freddy. I’ve got you.”

And then he sinks down, down between Percy’s spread thighs. Propped on the pillows like this gives Percy an excellent view of his dark head as Vax nuzzles kisses to Percy’s belly and hips, the crease of his thigh. Percy’s cock is still only half-hard, befuddled by this unexpected foray into his body’s baser needs, but Vax’s soft, undemanding mouth is patient. A few minutes pass in long stretch of warm kisses and humming breaths as blood pumps through Percy’s body, remembering how to feel. How to _want_. And oh, Percy wants, and as usual his brain is just a few steps ahead of the rest of him. But Vax doesn’t give him enough leeway to overthink it.

“Gods above and below, Vax, your _tongue_ ,” Percy gasps. The slow approach is almost unbearable. He rocks his hips up with what little strength he has, and Vax’s rumble of approval vibrates all the way down to the depths of his pelvis.

“You’re beautiful.” Vax pulls away long enough to press the words into Percy’s hipbone, flesh against flesh. His eyes are bright and playful, cheeks flushed—any trace of tears has been erased by the sheer enjoyment of teasing Percy with his mouth. And such a clever mouth it is. Percy reaches down, beneath the swathe of blanket, and drags his thumb along Vax’s plump lower lip.

“So are you.”

Vax closes his eyes. His lashes are dark sweeps of soot against his smiling cheeks as he cups Percy in one hand and leans down to lave him with his tongue again. Percy clutches at the sheets with both hands.

“Vax…”

“Still good?” Vax inquires, slurring around his mouthful. There’s a soft, wet _pop_ as he pulls off and licks his lips. Percy groans, heartfelt.

“Fuck. Yes, it’s good. Very, very good.”

Vax doesn’t ask him if he’s close, or press him to justify himself. Even when his lips are well and truly swollen, chin slick with his own saliva, he doesn’t stop sucking Percy’s cock. Doesn’t stop stroking the base with his fingers, or pressing on his taint with his knuckles. Percy bites his lip and writhes, grinding against Vax’s hand and mouth, and is rewarded with a long, slow slide _in_ , down Vax’s throat. Vax hasn’t had a gag reflex in years, and it shows in the cheeky glint in his eye when he swallows around Percy once. Twice.

“Fuck,” he breathes. He clutching Vax’s hair, now, instead of the sheets. He’s breathing like a racehorse, trembling, damp with sweat and his nose full of the scent of his own arousal. The musk is dizzying, and he presses his head back into the pillows, unable to stop the little jerks of his hips as he fucks Vax’s throat. “Fuck, Vax, I’m…”

He can’t even get the words out before orgasm slams into him out of nowhere. The tensile agony stretched so tightly that he wasn’t even sure he _could_ —and yet he is, coming hard down Vax’s throat, thighs trembling with strain. He cries out into the silent room, a tiny, pathetic whimper, and then he falls lax, completely spent. Vax withdraws, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Vax’ildan…”

“Oh, you beautiful boy,” Vax whispers hoarsely. He eases Percy’s legs out flat and tugs the rest of the blankets up around him, petting sweat-damp hair back from his brow. “You gorgeous thing. My Percy…”

“ _Vax._ ” He barely has the strength to lift his hands, but he manages somehow, pawing at Vax until he deigns to curl with Percy underneath the covers. Smug and smiling, Vax peppers the side of Percy’s face with kisses, steadying him. “Vax…” he slurs, hardly able to form words, “are you…”

“I’m just fine. Trust me.” Vax takes his chin in one hand and kisses him—he’s doing all the work, because Percy can barely feel his own face, but he hums a little encouragement and Vax licks obligingly into his mouth, giving him a little taste of himself.

To his great embarrassment, he falls asleep in the middle of it. He wakes up a little while later curled in a C-shape around Vax’s lanky form. Percy himself is swaddled in layers of blankets, but Vax is as naked as the day he was born, propped up slightly on the pillows as he reads a book balanced on his chest. The metal pendant glints at him from between the pages.

“Morning, sunshine.” Vax’s fingers card through his hair, ever gentle. “Third time’s the charm?”

“Mmmhh. Didn’t mean to fall asleep,” Percy mumbles, vaguely apologetic. His stomach rumbles, spurring him forward to sprawl more extravagantly across Vax’s chest. Now well and truly disturbed from his reading, Vax puts the book aside and kisses the top of his head.

“Don’t apologize, Freddy. You needed it.” His fingers trail down his forehead and rub the bridge of his nose teasingly, right where his glasses have left permanent indents in his skin. “Hungry?”

“Starving.” He wrinkles his brow against Vax’s fingers. “Is it too late for breakfast?”

“Too late? For the Lord of Whitestone? I think not.” Vax chafes his shoulder in a warming gesture and helps him to sit up. “Let’s go chase something up in the kitchens and harangue the others for being layabouts. _They_ don’t have the excuse of being almost dead.”

“I think I was _all_ dead for a minute there, Vax.”

“Hmph. Doesn’t matter now, does it?” Vax tugs him to the edge of the bed and stands, stretching his arms up over his head. His lean brown body seems to go on forever. Percy rests his forehead against Vax’s flank and strokes the curve of his thigh. “Freddy…”

“I know,” Percy interjects swiftly, voice edged with the uncertainty crawling up his spine. “I know there’s still… much work to do. But.”

“But?”

When there’s no immediate response, Vax takes Percy’s hand in his and rubs his thumb along the calloused knuckles.

“Don’t forget me,” Percy whispers. Embarrassed heat prickles at the back of his neck, but he meets Vax’s surprised look head-on. “You are walking a higher path than I can follow, Vax’ildan. So don’t forget me.”

Vax looks like he wants to protest, to dismiss Percy’s fears—but he doesn’t. Instead he only nods, a stagnant blend of confusion and understanding writ across his brow. “I could never forget you, Percival. Not in a hundred years, a hundred lifetimes.” He traces the line of Percy’s jaw with one hand. “Now enough of that. All right? Let’s get dressed and go down to breakfast and kill a fucking dragon.”

Percy bites his lip in a smile. “I would like nothing better.”


End file.
